Vietnam 1946: How the War Began

Stein Tønnesson

Vietnam 1946 is a political history of Vietnam in 1946 which foregrounds
the French-Vietnamese relationship and emphasises two key events, the
agreement of March 6th and the outbreak of war on December 19th.

The year opened with southern Vietnam (Cochinchina) under French control
and northern Vietnam controlled by an uneasy combination of the newly
proclaimed Vietnamese government and Nationalist Chinese troops who had
liberated it from the Japanese. The French government was in a state
of uncertainty, with de Gaulle resigning on January 20th but many key
officials in Indochina still looking to him for leadership and advice.

The March 6 agreement came about when some of those French officials
attempted a coup de main through a landing at Haiphong. They had failed
to get Chinese support, however, and when Chinese artillery fired at the
landing force, which had insufficient drinking water to withdraw, the
French were forced into accepting a peace settlement with the Vietnamese,
whom the Chinese also put pressure on.

"the signing of the Franco-Vietnamese agreement of March 6,
1946, recognising Vietnam as a 'free state,' did not result from
any temporary pragmatic, liberal, or moderate ascendancy among
French colonial decision-makers. ... the French sailed into a
Chinese trap. Peace was imposed by China, which forced the two
sides to sign a deal on terms neither really wanted."

With the Chinese gradually withdrawing, French-Vietnamese negotiations
at Fontainebleau dragged on without success, eventually coming to an
ambiguous "modus vivendi" agreement on September 14th. There was general
opposition by French decision-makers and politicians to full Vietnamese
independence, with only the French Communist Party, of which Ho Chi Minh
was a founding member, providing lukewarm support. (For both the United
States and the Soviet Union, the situation in France took precedence
over Vietnam.)

A French attack on Haiphong started on November 23rd. Tønnesson
describes the background of economic threats and disputes over customs
and traces the escalation of tension over several days. With thousands of
Vietnamese deaths, mostly civilian, following the use of heavy artillery
on civilian areas and refugee concentrations, Tønnesson suggests this
can reasonably be called a massacre. He also looks at events elsewhere
and considers the responsibility of the participants.

No immediate wider conflict followed, but the French took an increasingly
aggressive stance, hoping to elicit a response. They were under orders
not to attack, but that wasn't known to the Vietnamese, who stumbled
their way into an attack that went off half-cocked. Tønnesson's second
major thesis is that:

"the outbreak of war on December 19 was not a premeditated and
well-coordinated Vietnamese act of aggression as some recent
accounts, both Vietnamese and Western, say. ... Something went
wrong at the Vietnamese headquarters that day. Either the leaders
were not in control of their forces or they made a momentous
blunder — or both. ... Leon Blum's new French government had
decided to send Moutet on a peace mission to Hanoi. Thus Giap
saved High Commissioner d'Argenlieu and General Valluy from what
they feared most: a resumption of talks between the French and
Vietnamese governments over their heads. Regardless of whether
or not Giap ordered or authorized the attack at 8 p.m., or just
lost control, he fell into a French trap made in Saigon."

He also discusses the role of small nationalist parties, some strange
events surrounding the sabotage of the power station, and possible
provocation by French intelligence.

The final chapter goes through the actors and attempts to assign
responsibility for the slide into war. There is no attempt to consider
longer-term alternative histories of Vietnam.

Key Vietnamese sources are not public, so Tønnesson's account is written
primarily based on French sources, with a certain amount of indirect
inference and speculation about the meetings and decisions of Ho and Giap
and other Vietnamese leaders. (At one point he falls back on French
intelligence reports, albeit it with many warnings about their use.)
The history of 1946 will need to be rewritten, and Tønnesson's theses
reconsidered, when or if the Vietnamese archives are opened up.

Tønnesson conveys the contemporary tension well and makes his narrative
compelling without resorting to dramatisation or reconstruction.
His subject may seem narrow, but he makes a good case for it encompassing
at least two pivotal historical moments. Vietnam 1946 is accessible
to non-specialists as well as historians, and may also interest students
of French foreign policy.